A couple of days back I
was at my boss house to help him with some data analysis, and as a guest I
can not decide what will be on the television, although giving the chance
I would have choose not to watch NTA the stupid propaganda machine of the
Obasanjo government, but I have no choice but the watch the news; and it
happened on the news that day a report on the pilgrims scandal in Adamawa
state was carried and a interview with a very furious gentleman lamenting
and castigating the Adamawa State Pilgrims Board for their inability to
secure VISAS for hundreds of intending pilgrims from the state due to the
board corruption and mismanagement was on.

Ironically, that fellow
I found out later was a government sponsored pilgrim and what he was
really demanding was that the money paid for them by the government for
their pilgrimage be refunded to them directly, as they nurse the fear that
the next government in the state might not entertain such non-sense of
using government money to sponsor people on pilgrimage, this set my mind
thinking and I went on a personal research. In Islam we all know every
Muslim faithful is expected to perform the pilgrimage once in his life
time, if he can afford and when and only when he fulfilled series of
stringent conditions before he/she embark on such a journey.

We also know according
to the teaching of Islam that each and every pilgrim that made it to the
Hajj was invited by Allah; for it’s only the invited make it that is why
you find people of little means making it to the Hajj while people of high
means sometimes are yet to make it. Islam is a very simple religion, it’s
also a religion of rationality, and nothing is shrouded in mystery or
beyond the comprehension of the ordinary mortal.

Since the advent of
democratic governance in 1999, each and every year, governments across the
country devote millions of tax payers money in the name of sponsoring
people on holy pilgrimage, how and what criteria they use in selecting
those to be sponsored is known to them and them only. I am a Muslim and
by God I love and practice my religion to the best of my knowledge and
ability. Although I can not quote any Qur’anic verse(s) or Hadith to
support my stand on the absurdity of government sponsoring people on
pilgrimage, but I hope this piece will start a healthy discussion on the
matter, but looking at the scenario from a rational point of view, I find
it really difficult to OK the non-sense. I for one see it as flagrant
waste of tax payer money and I am sure Allah will not accept such
pilgrimage; I am of the opinion that Allah did not invite such people to
the holy land. By the way who gave the government the right to use our
money to sponsor anybody to Mecca
on pilgrimage or Jerusalem
on tourist visit?

Now lets look at it from
a angle of rationality, if we all believe that its only those invited by
Allah that make it to the Holy city of Mecca, then are those pilgrims
sponsored by governments also invited by Allah?, am sure a lot of my
readers will answer in affirmative, well, left to me and rationally
thinking they are not…. Why I said so is because I believe that those
politicians and by extension the government do not have the mandate of the
people they govern to use money from the coffers to sponsor their girl
friends, prostitutes who have little or no knowledge of even the simple
basics of performing ablution, political hooligans, stooge, marabous and
co-looters to the pilgrims as it’s evident from the list of sponsored
members. I am sure such a people will not make it into the list of
invitees of Allah (SWT).

Imagine an irresponsible
government that is yet to overcome the problem of roads, medicine in the
hospitals sponsoring thousands of people with money that is enough to
handle such problems, imagine a government that have not yet provided good
drinking water to its people or a government which can not boast of
providing qualitative education to the children of the poor, sponsoring
people en-mass to Mecca. I strongly believe such people are not the
invitee of the most high. In my state for example from 1999 to date ten
of thousands of people were sponsored by the government on pilgrimage to
Mecca and Jerusalem annually a rough calculations of the cost will show
that the government have spend billions on such a travesty. My dear
reader will agree that if such money were to be pumped into road
constructions nobody will be complaining about roads in Adamawa toady,
likewise if the money were to be put into provision of portable drinking
water, water hawking will have been a thing of the pass. But today a
visit to the garage will tell you that water selling is a lucrative
business in Adamawa as evident by the thousand of water hawkers arriving
from Gombe who have relocated to Adamawa state as they have in Gombe
thanks to their dynamic governor has put that chapter (water scarcity)
behind them, despite the fact that they have no river in the state as
contrast to Adamawa that have River Benue, River Gongola yet we still do
not have running water, and still, the government never fail to sponsor
thousand on pilgrimage annually

I therefore strongly
believe that anybody going to Mecca on such sponsorship from such
government, Allah will definitely have nothing to do with such pilgrimage,
and such people will be very surprise when they will be told on the day of
judgment that they have not perform any pilgrimage, and the one they took
on illegal funding is null and void.

It is high time our God
fearing Ulama’as not those that benefit from such charade start preaching
the virtues of turning down such offers and let our Legislators at both
States and Federal level enact laws that will ban in totality the act of
sponsoring people for any reason on pilgrimage. Be it, to go and pray for
the success of third term or anti-third term, or even for a governor who
is still nursing the ambition of returning for third term e after the
demise of third term, because he was told if certain number of people
stood somewhere in Mecca and pray for him it will come to reality and he
will return as governor even after a dismal performance.

I hope this my article
today will spark a healthy debate that will deal extensively on this
topic, and I hope people with knowledge of Qur’an and Hadith will step in
and contribute as my peace here today was solely of the side of logic
only.